{"id":458965,"date":"2026-10-07T10:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T10:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/458965\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T10:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T10:32:09","slug":"wilonsky-the-roller-rink-nobody-wants-and-dallas-cant-afford-to-keep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/458965\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilonsky: The roller rink nobody wants and Dallas can\u2019t afford to keep"},"content":{"rendered":"

In late June, the city\u2019s Office of Procurement Services quietly announced<\/a> that \u2014 huzzah and hallelujah \u2014 two groups had rolled up with proposals to take off City Hall\u2019s hands a property Dallas has been trying to offload since George W. Bush\u2019s first term. That would be Southern Skates, the roller rink on East\u00a0Ledbetter Drive funded with federal dollars and for decades kept alive with the city\u2019s spare change.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d never heard of either of the parties the city said was vying for Southern Skates, which had been willed into existence decades ago on once-vacant, drug-infested land by a collegiate track star-turned-Air Force-vet-turned-Black Panther named Fahim Minkah. But, maybe, there was some good news at last for the money-losing skating rink the city never wanted and has now all but erased from its budget.<\/p>\n

An email with the subject heading \u201cOperational Management of The Southern Skates Roller Rink\u201d arrived at the end of last week: \u201cThe City has determined to cancel this solicitation to reassess the current needs and readvertise the solicitation at a future date.\u201d Sigh. Shrug. Shoot. But not a surprise.<\/p>\n

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The two wanna-be operators were considered \u201cunresponsive,\u201d said John Jenkins, director of Dallas’ Park and Recreation Department. \u201cWhich means they didn\u2019t meet some of the minimum requirements we were asking for, or they didn\u2019t provide accurate responses.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Keshia Randall, the department\u2019s assistant director, later explained the procurement office had to cancel the process so they could start it all over again. Again. Best I can figure, this will be the fifth time the city\u2019s tried to skate on Southern Skates.<\/p>\n

The first was in 2005, when a man offered to buy it from the city for pennies on the dollar to remake it as a discount bazaar \u2014 no, thanks. The community, surveyed by the city, wanted a skating rink. But in 2008 City Hall declared it surplus property<\/a>, only to discover that anything built with $1 million in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development loans isn\u2019t just something you could sell for the shell<\/a>. So the city kept funding it, and in 2017 tried to find a third-party operator<\/a>. It came up empty for the first but not the last time.<\/p>\n

\"Southern<\/p>\n

Southern Skates celebrates its 27th anniversary this month with the city yet again trying to find someone to take it off the Park and Recreation Department\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n

File photo\/Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n

It\u2019d be funny if it weren\u2019t so sad if it weren\u2019t so infuriating. Especially since whenever it comes up at City Council, every rookie rep acts like they\u2019re the first ones to propose zero\u2019ing it out in the budget. North Dallas\u2019 Bill Roth last year sent the city manager a memo insisting that \u201coperating a roller rink is not a core government function and should be managed privately.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Which everyone knows. And has known. For years. Since November 2003, to be precise, when Minkah defaulted on the loan and left the city holding the feds\u2019 bag, resulting in foreclosure the following March and 22 years of teeth-gnashing and handwringing ever since.<\/p>\n

Southern Skates, which opened 27 years ago this month, has been a\u00a0punchline and punching bag for so long we forget why it even exists in the first place: because \u201cMinkah was interested in providing kids with constructive alternatives to gangs and drugs,\u201d Ann Zimmerman wrote<\/a> in the Dallas Observer in 1997. The Black Panther born Fred Bell<\/a>, a roller-skater long before shiny maple floors and disco balls overhead were ironic throwbacks, had spent the late 1980s and early \u201990s patrolling South Oak Cliff apartments surrendered to crack dealers.<\/p>\n

A skating rink, he told the Observer, would \u201ctake up the slack left by the black business community that had failed to develop the community.\u201d A community that now drives and walks past the 23,000-square foot Southern Skates, which sits across from a church and next to a pawn shop, and sees it gated, locked and empty four days a week.<\/p>\n

It took years for Minkah to raise the $1.5 million needed to build the rink; longer, still, for City Hall to approve it. Delays ultimately led to the city funding the project with HUD money<\/a>: $550,000 in Community Development Block Grant loans, another $560,000 in Section 108 loans. Chase Bank loaned Minkah another $400,000.<\/p>\n

\"Fahim<\/p>\n

Fahim Minkah’s in front of Southern Skates in 2004, after a foreclosure forced the city to temporarily shutter the roller rink. The city has spent decades trying to either offload Southern Skates or find a third-party operator to run the South Oak Cliff venue.<\/p>\n

File photo\/Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n

Randall told a council committee earlier this year<\/a> that Southern Skates used to cost the city $384,000 annually \u2014 not including a fortune in fixes made in recent years, which bumped that figure to $492,000 in 2024 and $459,000 in 2025. Now, that number is a big fat zero in the budget just approved by the City Council, which means Southern Skates has no full-time staffers, only \u201cborrowed\u201d personnel, as Randall\u00a0explained, from around the park department.<\/p>\n

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Southern Skates\u00a0\u2014 which is only open Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays\u00a0\u2014 does bring in revenue, largely from private rentals; Randall said it made around $120,000 in 2023 and $130,000 the following year. But that plummeted to $85,000 in 2025, when the rink was closed for a couple of months\u00a0\u2014 during summer break, no less\u00a0\u2014 to deal with a shifting foundation.<\/p>\n

And as we reported earlier this year,<\/a> Southern Skates went for months without heat after its gas service was shut off. It took months for anyone to notice.<\/p>\n

The just-adopted budget counted on the city finding someone to take the skating rink off its hands by Oct. 1\u00a0\u2014 \u201ca transition operation \u2026 to a third-party operator<\/a>,\u201d the budget reads through crossed fingers, \u201cto focus on core Park and Recreation service delivery.\u201d Randall told me Monday\u00a0that if the park department winds up operating Southern Skates throughout the current fiscal year, it could cost around $140,000, which sounds like a fortune when you\u2019re talking about a city so broke it keeps toying with the idea of planting billboards in parks.<\/p>\n

\"Southern<\/p>\n

Southern Skates’ lobby, which was all I could see Monday through the window as the roller rink is closed all but three days a week.<\/p>\n

Robert Wilonsky\/Staff writer<\/p>\n

Jenkins said Monday the city is again open to selling Southern Skates\u00a0\u2014 if city attorneys would allow it\u00a0\u2014 to \u201csomeone who has the experience and a track record.\u201d At this late date, he said, \u201ceverything is on the table.\u201d Because operating a skating rink isn\u2019t \u201ca core service\u201d of the park department.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou know they say let the private sector do what it does best?\u201d Jenkins said. \u201cThis is an example of that. I prefer to be focusing on what we do best \u2014 managing parks and recreation centers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parks like the 17-acre greenspace about a mile away, just down Bonnie View Road. College Park, it used to be called. Until March, anyway, when city officials planted a sign renaming it Fahim J. Minkah Park<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In late June, the city\u2019s Office of Procurement Services quietly announced that \u2014 huzzah and hallelujah \u2014 two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,88000,88952,152584],"class_list":["post-458965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-tp-dallas-city-council","tag-tp-dallas-city-hall","tag-tp-south-oak-cliff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}